23 October 2014

With Lenin’s books, the titles are often so exceptional that they pass
into the language without people knowing what the book was about. Sometimes
this leads to people “quoting” such a title in aid of a cause which is at odds
with the actual book that Lenin wrote. Such is often the case with “What is to
be Done?”, words that opportunists, utilitarians and “economists” love to use
to prop up their actually anti-Leninist arguments. You have to read the book to
know that.

“One Step Forward, Two Steps
Back” (1904) is another unforgettable title of Lenin’s that people are
often happy to repeat, as a form of words, without any knowledge or
understanding of Lenin’s work of that name or of its place in history.

“One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” is a unique work, different from all
others. It is a classic. It is Lenin’s report of the 1903 Second Congress of
the RSDLP, which had given rise to the terms “Bolshevik” and “Menshevik” and
all that went with the famous split in the ranks of the RSDLP.

Roughly, the step forward was the winning of a majority in the Congress,
while the two steps back were first the loss of Iskra, and then the loss of the Central Committee, following the
lobbying of the Mensheviks after the Congress. The Mensheviks got themselves
co-opted where they had not been elected, and proceeded to undermine and
ruthlessly expel the good Bolsheviks who had
been elected.

As unique as it was, historically speaking, yet the split between the
“opportunist” Mensheviks and the revolutionary Bolsheviks does have universal
resonance, and applicability as a lesson. It was not the first such split. Marx
and Engels had experienced a few similar contradictions, such as the one that
gave rise to Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Programme”. Lenin himself makes a
comparison with the split in the Great French Revolution between the “Montagne”
and the “Gironde”. Later, there was the great 1914 split in the
Social-Democratic Parties at the time of the Imperialist First World War. There
have been many more splits, since then, including the post-Polokwane formation
of COPE in South Africa.

The Communist University has put some parts of this book together, and
placed a later (1907) reflection of Lenin’s, from the Preface to Lenin’s
collection “Twelve Years”,
in front of them. This composite document is attached and linked below. Clearly,
the division between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks had not gone away by
1907, and we know that it did not go away until it was resolved another ten
years later in the October, 1917 revolution.

A little time spent with this shortened version of Lenin’s book will
help to gauge the nature of Rosa Luxemburg’s response to it, which will be
given next, together with Lenin’s rebuttal of Rosa.

Lenin’s final reply, also given in the next item, settled this
particular matter as between these two great revolutionaries, although it was
not the last of their disagreements.